Most of us readily recognize the ubiquitous snowbird, or Dark-eyed Junco (as birders know them). Juncos, mostly short-distance migrants, arrive in Maine from parts north of us as early as mid-August (some do nest here), but virtually all are in place in time for the first snowfall, hence one of the pet names for the birds.

A well-studied species, juncos live across all of North America down to northern Mexico, with a number of different races within the two species—dark-eyed and yellow-eyed—that are scattered throughout their range. The most likely race of the Dark-eyed Junco we see here in Maine is the Slate-colored.

This small but plump bird, with its pink bill, overall slate gray color (females are browner), white belly and white outer tail feathers that flash when the bird takes flight, is actually a sparrow. As such, they are ground feeders that are particularly fond of the small seeds of weedy shrubs, bits found in the leaf litter or on lawns, and commercial seed, such as millet, rather than sunflower seeds that spill out of birdfeeders.

Juncos tend to scratch the ground’s surface in search of food, hopping forward and kicking in a backward motion. Watch these birds closely. Typically, the more birds in the flock, the less frequently the individuals look up from their feeding. There is safety in numbers—one of the values to birds flocking, because it reduces stress to individual birds as they “relax” a bit while they eat without having to be constantly looking over a shoulder for what might make a meal of them.

Juncos appear to be a favorite food of Sharp-shinned Hawks, an impressive predator that will actually take a Mourning Dove, a bird approximately the same size as the hawk. Juncos also can fall prey to owls and shrikes. However, the main predator of the junco, particularly those around bird feeding stations, appears to be cats, both feral and domestic. According to one individual fromCalifornia, a flock of 35 juncos at a feeder “lost one bird daily until two cats and one shrike were shot, whereupon mortality ceased.” Not surprisingly, it is unclear who shot the cats and the shrike.

For fluid intake, juncos drink from small streams, sip from moisture on vegetation or they eat snow. Like their cousins the American Tree Sparrow, juncos will bathe in light, fluffy, “dry” snow, similar to the way some birds take a dust bath. The birds dip head first toward the ground flapping their wings and collecting snow to toss over their bodies, and then they preen individual feathers to keep them clean. To clean their bill, they will swipe first one side of the bill then the other from the base to the tip on a branch. They perform this bill-swiping frequently, so do keep on the lookout for it.

For nighttime roosting, juncos prefer conifer and cedar trees and bushes to remain out of the cold winds. Often, they will snuggle into the bushes around the front of our homes for warmth during cold and snowy nights. When no such shrub is available, these birds hunker down on the ground under dried leaves, at the base of tall grasses or in brush piles—another good reason to maintain at least one year-round brush pile in a corner of your yard.

Meanwhile, it is likely that these birds are helped through the winter by the seed that falls to the ground out of bird feeders. Studies show that northern wintering populations of juncos probably suffer from starvation during harsh winters with lots of snow cover. With this in mind, when shoveling the walkway, remember to shovel an area at the base of the feeders and spread fresh mixed seed for these birds, as well as the cardinals, other sparrows, Mourning Doves and other ground feeders.

Perhaps the junco is not as brilliant as the cardinal is against the backdrop of snow, but juncos do add a measure of cheer and a flurry of activity out there on a cold winter’s day. And those white outer tail feathers flash like a piece of ribbon as the birds flutter hither and thither around the yard, adding yet another spot of cheer out in our windows. I encourage you to offer their favorite food of mixed seeds, which is rather inexpensive, to attract them to your yard. And, both sexes sing—even in winter. Listen for a musical trill on one pitch, and enjoy the snowbirds.

All of us here at Marine Parts Express “overwinter” here  in Maine, but many of our customers are true snowbirds and skip down to more southern climes. We ship their parts directly to them and we are happy to ship worldwide. For all your marine engine parts needs, call us toll free at 877.621.2628, or outside the U.S., 207.882.6165.

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Townhall.com

Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a “key part of our ‘Make It in America’ agenda.” During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, “a foreign worker’s best friend.” In a recent news conference, President Barack Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China “has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage,” adding that “we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued … (and) that, above all, means China.”

Republican 2012 presidential candidates have jumped on the anti-China bandwagon. Mitt Romney wrote: “If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. … I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is.” Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, “I want to go to war with China.”

Let’s look at the magnitude of our trade with China. An excellent place to start is a recent publication (8/8/2011) by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, titled “The U.S. Content of ‘Made in China.’” One of the several questions they ask is: What is the fraction of U.S. consumer spending for goods made in China? Their data sources are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Hale and Hobijn find that the vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States are produced here. In 2010, total imports were about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, and of that, 2.5 percent came from China. A total of 88.5 percent of U.S. consumer spending is on items made in the United States, the bulk of which are domestically produced services—such as medical care, housing, transportation, etc.—which make up about two-thirds of spending. Chinese goods account for 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditures, about one-quarter of the 11.5 percent foreign share. Chinese imported goods consist mainly of furniture and household equipment; other durables; and clothing and shoes. In the clothing and shoes category, 35.6 percent of U.S.consumer purchases in 2010 were items with the “Made in China” label.

Much of what China sells us has considerable “local content.” Hale and Hobijn give the example of sneakers that might sell for $70. They point out that most of that price goes for transportation in the U.S., rent for the store where they are sold, profits for shareholders of the U.S. retailer, and marketing costs, which include the salaries, wages and benefits paid to the U.S. workers and managers responsible for getting sneakers to consumers. On average, 55 cents of every dollar spent on goods made in China goes for marketing services produced in the U.S.

Going hand in hand with today’s trade demagoguery is talk about decline in U.S. manufacturing. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy—with its own GDP—it would be tied with Germany as the world’s fourth-richest economy. Today’s manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220, three times higher than it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. That means more can be produced with fewer workers, resulting in a precipitous fall in manufacturing jobs, from 19.5 million jobs in 1979 to a little more than 10 million today.

The bottom line is that we Americans are allowing ourselves to be suckered into believing that China is the source of our unemployment problems when the true culprit is Congress and the White House.

Reprinted with permission.

Dr. Williams, who very kindly and generously gave us permission to reprint this article on our blog, serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of “Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?” and “Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.”

Williams, Walter E. (2011, December 21). China trade: myths vs. reality. Townhall.com. Retrieved December 21, 2011, from http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2011/12/21/china_trade_myths_vs_reality.

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Birds are of a marvelous design, just like everything else in the natural world, and have ways of keeping balance in their lives, even during the coldest temperatures of the shortest days of the year. To survive, most birds must maintain a body temperature of about 104 degrees Fahrenheit. To maintain that temperature in the cold of winter, they employ a variety of strategies.

Food being the primary source of energy, and the available winter hours for them to feed being fewer than the hours of sleep, birds must eat almost constantly just to survive. This is a good reason to include a high energy food like raw beef suet at your backyard feeding station throughout the winter months. They have to have enough daily food intake to draw from stores that will fuel heat created by their own bodies during the nighttime.

Bird feathers have tiny muscles at their base, making it possible to fluff them, thereby trapping an insulating layer of air between their feathers and skin. Do you use a down parka? If you bend over, you’ll note the woosh of warm air trapped under the zipped parka when it escapes under your chin. Same premise holds in the case of birds, but it’s built-in for them. Like us, birds also shiver when they’re cold, as a kind of exercise, which turns the body’s stored fat into heat.

As can sometimes be seen on a cold, sunny day, a bird may sit with its back to the sun, head turned toward its back, face tucked into the plumage of its shoulder. Water birds such as ducks floating on the water’s surface will do this, as well. Such a position decreases the total heat-dissipating area of its body, but it also covers bare surfaces that lose heat, such as facial skin, naked combs or wattles.

Shorebirds, gulls, and waders may be seen standing on one leg on rocks or on the beach, head tucked into a shoulder, body facing into the wind—the other leg is tucked up close to its belly. Birds can control the temperature of their legs and feet separately from their bodies by constricting blood flow to these extremities, thereby reducing heat loss. In addition, their legs and feet are covered with specialized scales that minimize heat loss, also allowing them to conserve heat for the rest of their body.

Birds of open areas have their strategies, too. Wind velocity is greatly diminished at ground level. Birds such as sparrows or larks will scrunch up together, close to the ground, sometimes making a bit of an igloo out of snow or a grass tussock, or by scratching a shallow hollow in the ground’s surface.

To fully protect itself from the cold temperatures, wind, and precipitation through the night, a bird would do well to have a solid wall of cover surrounding it. The more enclosed the bird is, the less heat escapes into the air around it. Most frequently, songbirds roost alone, however, on extremely cold and bad weather nights birds will congregate in huddles, sometimes with groups of different species, but mostly of the same. A British ditty describes this, “When tom-tits cluster, soon it will bluster.”

A collection of Brown Creepers might cling to the bark of a tree trunk in a huddled mass, bodies overlapping, heads inward and tails sticking out. Black-Capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmice generally sleep alone, perhaps snuggled into a bough of a conifer, but on a cold night, these birds may gather in a huddle inside an old woodpecker hole, an old nest of another species, or even a nest box.

The Yellow-Rumped warbler, a hardy warbler that may be found here along the northeastern coast even in winter, is not a colonial or a cavity nester. However, these warblers have been known to seek out others of their species and hunker down in an old nest for added warmth and protection from the harsh elements.

Mainewriter Bernd Heinrich released a report not too long ago of a study he made on the wee four-inch kinglets. He spent many cold Maine nights following the birds until he found what he was looking for: kinglets roosting together huddled for warmth and survival.

There is a downside to some of these strategies birds use. Sometimes, when cleaning nest boxes in early spring, carcasses of birds are found inside them. The birds died over the winter from the cold, suffocation from the weight of layered birds with the top ones dying from exposure and the bottom birds too weak to work up through the pile, or starvation.

Still, huddling must work for the birds more often than not or they would not be using such a strategy to survive a cold winter’s night. On cold late afternoons, watch nest boxes for birds like chickadees and nuthatches, and even the occasional woodpecker, entering for the night. Also, look for juncos, sparrows and other small birds roosting in the shrubbery around the house. Better still, hang boxes and plant shrubs next spring with the birds in mind. They need all the help they can get surviving these long Maine winters.

Till next …

Noreen

While we up here in chilly New England have battened down the hatches getting ready for the cold, it doesn’t stop us from being able to send engines and parts to all our warmer climate customers. For all your marine engine parts needs, call us toll free at 877.621.2628, or outside the U.S., 207.882.6165.

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It struck me the other day that everyone talks about government debt and how much personal debt people have, but I had never seen what the total debt is. So here is a nifty table showing some of these. All the numbers are a percentage of a country’s GDP and are estimates.

So, in the United States, the total debt is 289% of GDP and out of this number 80% of GDP is Government Debt, 124% of GDP is Business/Bank Debt and 85% of GDP is Household Debt. Or, to phrase it another way, as a percentage of total debt, which is a bit more revealing of the government and societal pressures that countries have to deal with and the decisions that are made either consciously or unconsciously.

There are all sorts of observations and deductions that can be made from these numbers. For example, I think what it shows is that while Japan and France have relatively low Household Debt they have higher than average Government and Business/Bank Debt. But the reasons for this are different. Japan has a history of high personal savings, but the country has been forced to keep society afloat through government support of its industries.

The French, on the other hand, have forced their industries to keep artificially high wages and benefits by government edict. That has kept Government Debt down, but has forced businesses to take up the slack. Much of the needs of the French people are supplied by either the government or by their employers, so personal debt is lower.

Another example is South Korea and the United Kingdom, both of which have relatively low Government Debt. Again, it is for different reasons. The Koreans are much more hands off when it comes to economic issues type forcing industry or households to take on the debt risk, while the U.K. form of socialism controls the economy more closely and forces industry to take on the debt.

You notice none of these broad generalizations include efficiency or value considerations and there are all sorts of other factors that create the choices that countries make. The only aspect that seems clear is that less debt is better than more debt and more capitalistic economies seem to spread debt risk over the entire economy more than the socialistic countries that either dictates the entity that will be the debtor or take the debt onto themselves.

I have no idea which is better, but this decision may affect which class of borrower has the most say in the governing of the country. In all cases, the beliefs and societal mores can tie the hands of decision makers more effectively than laws passed.

I would love to find the same sort of numbers for China, Dubai, or some other very strictly controlled economy more totalitarian form of government and compare it with the numbers for Sweden or Denmark. And wouldn’t poor Greece’s or Portugal’s numbers be fun to look at?

~J.D. Neeson

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When I was working for a large manufacturing company in the 1980s, the dreaded juggernaut on the horizon was the Japanese. Everyone thought it would be only a matter of time before all manufacturing would end up on the Japanese shores, due to the Japanese’s relatively low labor rates and their adoption of new manufacturing techniques. What eventually happened, of course, was that all those Japanese workers began to enjoy having a little more money and began to want a little more.

Then, within five to seven years, there was a great move afoot to move manufacturing to South Korea, where the Koreans’ relatively low labor rates and their adoption of new manufacturing techniques made them the darlings of manufacturers.

So, I greeted the recent news about China’s concern over the number of companies that were moving to Vietnam, Myanmar, and Cambodia, with their relatively low labor rates and their adoption of new manufacturing techniques, with gentle pleasure and not-so-gentle satisfaction.

Apparently, wages in China have risen 158 percent over the last 10 years or so, and 11 percent in the last year alone. The Chinese have begun to try a number of what they call “adjustment strategies.” One is they hope to try to transition to high-value, low-labor manufacturing (i.e. fewer workers and more robots), but what happens to all those workers that are displaced?

Currently, approximately 300 million of China’s 1.3 billion people are involved with manufacturing, or 23 percent of the population (the United States’ percentage is 3.5 percent), and they are unlikely to be happy campers. Just think how much excitement is generated in the U.S. on this issue and then multiply that by seven.

Once workers have had a taste of the apple it is just about impossible to take it away from them. I bet the Chinese leadership lie awake nights thinking about what might happen if growth slows and unemployment increases and a whole bunch of people look toward Peking for answers.

On a side note, during the ’80s when all of us in the U.S. manufacturing world were frantically trying to imitate the Japanese, I always had the vision of a bunch of guys in Tokyo sitting around a big table discussing what they could make the foolish U.S. guys do. One might say something like, “Let’s convince them we all do jumping jacks every morning.” Another guy would say, “Oh, that’s good. I know, I know—let’s tell them we use little red cards for tracking.” And one of the other guys would say, “I have a cat called Kanban, so why don’t we call it that.”  Then they all giggle and drink their sake.

~J.D. Neeson

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The non-migratory, dainty Downy is the smallest of all North American woodpeckers. Its name, given by Mark Cates, the early American naturalist, refers to the generally soft and downy appearance of this woodpecker’s plumage. I refer to as “dainty” as a reminder that it is the smaller of the very similar, but much larger, “huge” Hairy Woodpecker.

The Downy, at less than 6-1/2 inches, is black above, with a white patch on the back, white spots on the wings and a black and white tail. The plain throat and underparts are buff colored or grayish white. The Downy’s head has white stripes above and below the dark-colored eyes, and males alone have a red patch at the back of the head.

Woodpecker tailbones are relatively large, as are the muscles attached to the bones, and the tail feathers are very stiff, allowing the bird to use the tail as a prop supporting its weight as it clings to the vertical surface of a tree trunk. At the end of relatively short legs are the zygodactyl feet, two toes in front and two behind, adding further advantage to clinging to a vertical surface. As the Downy hitches up a tree—seldom down a tree because that stiff tail is rather awkward for moving backward—it peers under bark crevices in search of insects, larvae and insect eggs.

The bird’s long, flexible tongue, enclosed in a muscular sheath, is attached to a long complex of bones called the hyoid, which has two horns that extend backward from the base of the tongue, curve around and over the back of the skull and wrap around the eye. The tip of the tongue has backward-directed barbs, used to detect and capture its prey. Between the barbs and the sticky substance coating the Downy’s tongue, the larvae don’t stand a chance at escaping.

Downies will also consume seeds like acorns and sunflower, as well as wild fruits like blueberries and poison ivy berries. They will also consume fat from a dead carcass, or raw beef suet (available at most grocery stores) hung out in a mesh bag or suet cage. Downies, like other woodpeckers, will also take peanut butter, especially crunchy, placed in a log feeder or spread onto pine cones.

Next time there is a Downy in your yard, watch it as it moves through the area. They scour tree trunks and branches in search of food. Note how the bird will drop down, not move horizontally, to the next tree it is scouring. It may occasionally work its way down a short distance of a trunk to a feeder. Try to watch it through binoculars. Note that both feet are lifted at the same time as it makes its descent in small “steps” as it loops its way down to the feeder. With careful observation, you may get to see that awesome tongue in action, as well.

Note, too, that Downies are often in the company of a loose flock of birds, such as chickadees and nuthatches. The Downy is often on the fringe, not exactly a part of the flock. It is thought that this loose flocking allows the birds “more eyes” to scan for predators, giving each individual bird a chance to concentrate on locating food items.

Should a perceived threat approach such a flock, try to remember to watch the response of the individual birds. Some will be vocal in their response and most will fly away, however, a Downy is more likely to remain stationary, sometimes for many minutes, say 15 or 20. If you witness these behaviors and the “frozen” stance of the woodpecker, scan the area and you may see a Sharp-Shinned or a Cooper’s hawk in the immediate vicinity of the birds, and this is the cause of their various reactions.

Although not particularly vocal during the winter months, Downies do tap year-round. Follow the sounds of the tapping and take the time to watch the bird once you spot it. Try to discern if the bird is tapping in search of food, or if it appears to be excavating a hole. As winter approaches, they will create a roosting hole to survive the cold nights. They seldom roost in a nest box, and almost never out in the elements, and the hole they excavate for roosting purposes will be rougher and shallower than the one it will create to raise a family.

For such a tiny bird, the dainty Downy is big on interesting ecology. Let me know what you witness as you follow these birds through the winter.

We at Marine Parts Express are not terribly dainty, but we do scour the world to find those hard to find parts for our customers. For all your marine engine parts needs, call us toll free at 877.621.2628, or outside the U.S., 207.882.6165.

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Marine Parts Express is a division of Water Resources, Inc., a privately held Maine Corporation

The U.S. and China’s manufacturing output is about the same—the Chinese do it with approximately 300 million people, while the U.S. does it with 11 million workers.

Over the summer, amidst all the yelling about the debt crisis, foreign demand for U.S. Treasuries grew by $88 billion (even though China sold around $36 billion, England purchased $44 billion). Even with the downgrade, the U.S., with its economy, is the only nation big enough to absorb so much cash. Right now, foreign ownership of  U.S. Treasuries is around $4.6 billion, which is a huge amount, but Americans own more than this so the country isn’t really owned by the Chinese.

With all the gnashing of teeth about big evil China and how it will take over the world, it is sort of nice to remember that the GDP of the U.S. is three times (3x) larger thanChina’s, as indicated below.

(2010 numbers)

U.S.        $14.526 trillion

China       $5.878 trillion

Japan       $5.458 trillion

Germany   $3.386 trillion

France      $2.512 trillion

U.K.          $2.250 trillion

Some of our intrepid politicians bemoan the planned increase in the minimum wage rate stating that these raises hurt businesses and reduce job growth. However, the statistics seem to say something different. In 2008 only 3% of all workers made minimum wage. By 2010 the amount had jumped to 6% of all workers, but the Federal minimum wage had grown from $5.15 to $7.25, so most of the jump was probably from the fact that the minimum wage had gone up, while wages themselves had kept flat. In any case, it is pretty small number of people.

My stepson is convinced that Social Security will be gone by the time he retires. And he is not alone. Egged on by the doom sayers and special interest groups, an entire generation believes that SS is on death’s door. Actually, the Social Security system is fine for the next 25 years or so. From now until around 2022 there will be a surplus of collections overpayments. In the year 2035, give or take, the surplus finally disappears, but there is still enough money in the fund to supply full payments through 2055 or so.

And this assumes that Congress won’t do something to fix it. My bet is that they will eliminate the maximum wage payment and will force people making over the roughly $110,000 maximum to continue to pay SS and Medicare up to their actual salaries and increase the retirement age to around 70. These two changes alone mean the fund is solvent through 2099.

End Part 1

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I don’t know if it’s just me or not, but I never know what to do with those photographs of their small children that my friends give me. Now, I am happy to look at them, admire them, comment on them and agree that they are a chip off the ol’ block. But what I don’t want is to have the handy wallet size picture given to me.

Now, I have enough compulsory pictures in my wallet of my own child (which, if you want, I can show you for you to agree that isn’t she the cutest thing imaginable) along with receipts, credit cards, driver license, business cards, notes to myself, notes from my wife of items that should be either purchased or work done, clippings and, oh yes, a dollar or two if I am lucky. So I really don’t need another picture.

But it is darn difficult to say no. The parent (strangely fathers are worse as they hand the picture to you in such a way that you just know they will be emotionally crushed if you refuse it) looks into your eyes and says something like, “We knew you would want to see these right away.” And you have to say nice things. You can’t recoil in horror and you have to be very careful what you say. I lost a friend one time by saying how rugged his child looked and what a linebacker he’d make. My friend snatched the picture back (come to think of it, it was the only time I escaped) and said, rather testily I thought, “Yes, my daughter is a bit big boned.”

A month or so ago I was cleaning out a drawer and I found an envelope containing about twenty-five pictures of small smiling (or grimacing) children. Now, some parents kindly and wisely write the child’s name and the date on the back. I say wisely because, no matter what you may think, all small children look pretty much the same and the inscription somehow makes it harder to throw the pictures away. One says to himself, “Gee, they went to all the trouble of giving me the pictures and they even spent the time to write ‘Chris __ Halloween ’98’ on it. It would be wrong to throw it away.”

Now I use “Chris __ Halloween ’98” as an example because, of all the parents I know, his are the ones that have most committed themselves to aggressively thrusting pictures into my hand. I have numerous pictures of Chris in various Halloween costumes. Chris seemed to have a penchant for costumes requiring masks. “Chris __ Halloween ’99” is a blend of the Lone Ranger and one of the Teenage Ninja Turtles (Donatella, I believe), while “Chris __ Halloween ’02” has Chris dressed as Zorro holding a sack with dollar signs on it.

Yesterday, I ran across Chris’s father. He promptly, and with a defiant pride, gave me the “Chris __ Christmas ’11” picture destined to join its fellows in my drawer. I thought that Chris looked rather handsome in his orange jump suit. His father tells me that he should be out by Easter.

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Letter to the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2011, as shown at the bottom of this entry.

Dear Sir:

I enjoyed your section on “How To …” a few weeks ago. It was quite fun.

However, as a claimant in the Gulf spill, I believe the section written by Kenneth Feinberg, “How to give away $5 billion,” was grossly mis-titled.

The claim process was a disaster in its own right. We went through five different sub-contracted claim processing companies and innumerable “claim representatives,” none of which were able to explain the process or even state where the claim was in the process. There was no accountability, or even a consistent method on how the claim was to be presented or what information was required.

We eventually had to enlist Senator Collins’ office and it wasn’t until they repeatedly asked for an update on our claim that there was a settlement payment. The payment was about two-thirds of our actual loss, but after a year of contention and frustration, we took the money and ran.

Marine Parts Express supports commercial and pleasure boat owners and has a relatively sophisticated computer system that allowed us to supply supporting documentation down to the Zip Code level, by state, by day and across the years! Whenever we were asked for new documentation in yet another, different format we were able to comply.

I suspect many smaller businesses would be unable to meet these ridiculous demands and probably just gave up. I firmly believe that the process was set up to encourage people to give up.

And this is my final point; Mr. Feinberg doesn’t seem to understand what his function was supposed to be. He wasn’t appointed to keep settlements down, but to make sure that the $20 billion that BP was forced to set aside was equitably distributed. Mr. Feinberg seems to be so proud that he kept the settlements down to $5.3 billion and saved BP so much money.

The people whose lives have been so disrupted by BP’s shameful and destructive behavior deserved a better champion than one who writes, “You try to err on the side of being generous without being Santa Claus. Anyone can give money away.”

J.D. Neeson, President, Marine Parts Express

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Taken from Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2011:

GIVE AWAY $5 BILLION

Kenneth Feinberg

We received more than 1 million claims from the Gulf spill and have paid out about $5.3 billion to more than 200,000 claimants. When you’re dealing with that kind of volume, you need speed and fairness and consistency. The first challenge is to determine who’s eligible. It’s one thing for a fisherman whose livelihood depends on Gulf shrimp to be eligible; it’s another for a restaurant in Tennessee. Even then you need to calculate what damage is related to the spill and not to the recession or a poor business decision. The most difficult cases involve claims where there’s little or no documentation. You can’t just pay people because you think they’ve been affected. You need to help them find a way to document their loss. It’s different when you’re managing a fund with a $20 billion pledge from BP, as opposed to working through the legal system. A court might not recognize the validity of some claims, but you need to consider them carefully. You try to err on the side of being generous without being Santa Claus. Anyone can give money away. You learn to live with the potshots and the criticism.

These programs should be the exception rather than the rule. Bad things happen to good people every day, but I didn’t see a program after Katrina or Joplin. Policymakers need to be wary about doing an end run around the traditional way of resolving disputes in this country.

*Feinberg oversaw the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and administers the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Victim Compensation Fund.

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“The Week” (a great magazine by the way) mentioned, almost in passing, that the University of Washington had mapped the molecular structure of an enzyme from an AIDS-like virus. The hope is that the enzyme could be used to stop the disease from spreading.

That fact alone is good news, but what fascinated me the most was how the scientists managed to do the mapping. The mapping was done using 60,0000 volunteer video gamers who were using a software program that allowed them to manipulate the enzyme and receive points for how efficiently they did it. Apparently, scientists have been working on this mapping for ten years. The gamers did it in ten days.

The link below sort of explains how they did it:

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/09/how-online-gamers-solved-aids-mystery.html

Fascinating, and a little scary. I think this and the IBM Watson (the Jeopardy-playing computer) may be the biggest jumps in decades. Not quite artificial intelligence, but finding a way to use the collective abstract reasoning of 60,000 people or developing algorithms that allowed Watson to access 1,000 gigabytes of information in less than a second, is getting pretty close. I believe 20 years from now we will all talk about these two events the way we now talk about the Univac or the Web or the theory of relativity.

And now they think that some subatomic particles go faster than the speed of light! It not only throws out all the expanding universe and missing mass issues, it means that perhaps the universe isn’t all that old and maybe there are no other dimensions and maybe quantum physics and tunneling is all wrong.

J.D. Neeson

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